


Now Is The Time For You To Be Beautiful

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [311]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Honeypot, Angst, Brainwashing, M/M, Seduction, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 15:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20781185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: There is a ritual each time they wake him.





	Now Is The Time For You To Be Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/VenusMonstrosa/status/1175724723017310208?s=20) and [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFTh-eYWwAAhRh9?format=png&name=small).
> 
> Note: _Zima_ is "winter" in Russian.

There is a ritual each time they wake him. Strong hands draw him from the cold and guide him towards warmth, towards light; they squeeze him when he stumbles--it takes time for all of his body to awaken--and murmur to him in voices that are soft and unfamiliar, though his stirring mind tells him that the words they speak are always the same:

_ Come, pet. Just a few more steps. Now is the time for you to be beautiful, eh? Come. _

He knows the dreams have ended when they press him into the water, when its waves swallow him up to his chin. He is still weak, more like a kitten than the tiger they wish him to be, so it’s easier for him to surrender to the ritual than to fight it, even as some part of him understands that he is a grown man who can wash his own hair and scrub his own body and rub soap over the curves of his face. In an hour, he knows, his eyes closed, his skin stirring at the power of another’s touch, he will be capable of this and more, so much more, and he aches for it by the time they’ve finished with him, by the time they lift him from the water and turn sweet-smelling cream over every inch of his skin.

The ritual allows for this, in time and opportunity: the arousal that sometimes follows the end of his dreams. There is a bed in a locked room; an eager, willing partner. He brings them pleasure. He finds his own. He doesn’t fall back asleep.

Then there are clothes for him to wear and a briefing for him to scan. Where and when, this briefing tells him; who and how. A hand on his shoulder, then, that belongs to a man in a uniform. Is it the same man each time? He’s not sure.

“Come, pet,” the uniformed man says, no gentleness in him. “Just a few more steps. Now is the time for you to be beautiful, eh? Come.”

*****  


There are constants in the world that transcend calendars. Zima knows this. They are his stock in trade. The man in the uniform calls them his weapons, but such a description strikes Zima’s ears as crude and inelegant. He’s no soldier in his own mind; he is a creator of love.

_ Da_, there is work to be done after sex and sometimes before it: papers exchanged or photographs taken, the quiet theft of a key. And the love he weaves for an hour or a month is never lasting. That is not the nature of the thing. But what he gives the men and women he lures into bed is beautiful, Zima thinks, while it lasts. The man in the uniform sneers at this notion: “Tch, you do what you were designed to do, comrade _ shlyukha_,” he is fond of saying. This is not part of the ritual. “You bend over when we tell you or you take it out and you fuck. It is nothing more, what you are. Only this.”

After many years, however, Zima has chosen not to take this to heart. There is little room left, anyway, so crowded are its chambers with each person he’s been awakened to love.

And he does love them, even though they try to make him forget them. He may know them an hour; he may know them for months, but he remembers each of their smiles, the way each of their hands felt on his face. He remembers the sounds of their pleasure and how it had felt to come with them, for them; each of these joys, in Zima’s mind, is a different color that is captured in amber, and they sit in a place within him that the machines that preface sleep cannot touch.

The man in the uniform does not know this. Of course he doesn’t. If he did, he would not be so quick to call Zima a whore.

The world changes in between Zima’s dreams, dreams of a city he’s never been to, of streets filled with people that steam after it rains. Of a blond boy with thin arms that feel like steel around his neck whose kisses are fierce and taste of apples and bitter bathtub gin. The world changes, yes, but people hardly do, whether he tugs them out of short skirts or silk trousers or wide-lapelled suits. They fuck his mouth with the same abandon in the days of rationing as they do in the age of plenty and color TVs; their bodies are as tight inside for him, because of him, when the Berlin Wall rises as they are in the year that it falls. And the shiver down his spine when they clutch at his hair and cry out his name--whatever it happens to be, in this time--is just as sweet when phones live on tables as it is when they appear in people’s pockets: lovemaking, it seems, is a constant. Is it any wonder that he cannot forget any of them? The tease of their tits against his chest or their strong thighs spread around his head; the taste of their precum, delicate and salty; the spear of red in their cheeks, after, when some of them know shame.

“Oh,” he’ll say through hooded lashes, then, biting his lip as he was trained to, bidding his own face to fill with heat. “You won’t tell anyone about this, will you? If they knew what I just let you do to me, they might think I was…” Water in his eyes, a tremble. “You know what they’ll think. Please don’t tell.”

Sometimes, this makes them reach for him, soothe him, smooth their hands down his back and whisper soft things that takes their focus from the mistake they’ve just made. Sometimes, his fear excites them and they fuck him again, their own potential ruin forgotten as their cock stiffens or their pussy softens and they take what they need from him. 

The man in the uniform finds these moments amusing. He makes a point of telling Zima so.

“They know they’re fucked; that’s why they do it. Deep down, they know you’ve screwed them over, so they figure why not get one last screw out of you?” He will look at Zima then and pretend to wait for an answer. Chuckle when there isn’t one. “Fools, _ shlyukha_. That’s who the Motherland sends you fuck. They deserve what they get, don’t they?”

_ No_, Zima will think, for this is the hardest time for him, when the man in the uniform is at his side again, marching him back towards sleep, when he cannot help but know how are he is again from the warmth he was programmed to crave. _ They deserve to be loved and I gave that to them. They’ll remember that, even after the bitterness comes, the anger. They will remember my love_.

“Tch,” the man in the uniform will say, the sound like a stone. “Come, pet. Just a few more steps. Now is the time for you to dream, eh? Come.”

**Author's Note:**

> One more installment here, I hope.


End file.
